Duramax Issue

For those of you who are considering which tow vehicle to purchase, I wanted to share my recent experience with my 2008 Silverado 3500 HD Duramax. I bought this vehicle new in 2008 with the idea that it would provide me long, dependable service if maintained properly for at least 200,000 miles. I have maintained this truck in strict accordance with the GM recommended service intervals. In July when my wife retired, we began our life as "fulltimers". With 115,000 miles on my Silverado, I thought it was well broke in for our planned two year journey across the USA. Well, only 1000 miles into our journey while driving west on I-90 in Montana, my Silverado suddenly lost power and the DIC indicated the engine was under reduced power. Using my OBD II scanner, a code P 0087 was indicated. I took the vehicle to the GM dealer in Missoula, MT who told me that all their diagnostic tests indicated no problem. They indicated that is was possibly an injector problem, no if it occurred again to simply erase the OBD II code and keep on "trucking" until the problem became more pronouned. So, we continued on our journey until the engine lost power 8 times during a 150 mile trip from Boise to Arco, MT. This time I took the Silverado to the GM dealer in Idaho Falls where it was determined that 7 of the 8 injectors were failing. With over 115,000 miles on it, the Silverado was out of warranty so I had to bear the ($7,000) expense of replacing the seven bad injectors. I thought it highly irregular for seven injectors to all of a sudden go bad, so I contacted GM Customer Assistance requesting that GM assist in the cost of this repair. GM's marketing and advertising touts the durability and long life of the Silverado truck, so I thought maybe they would stand behind their claims and help with the this extraordinary repair cost. GM declined to share in this cost because the Silverado was out of warranty. They acknowledged that an injector failure of this magnitude was irregular, but since the truck was out of warranty, it was my problem. So, if you are considering the purchase of a GM product as your tow vehicle, this may be representative of how durable the truck really is and how GM will not stand behind their claims of durability and long life of their trucks. Use this info to weigh your tow vehicle options carefully. Send me a PM if you want more info on this issue.